‘’Take me to the vineyards of Lavaux, Wanna see the mountains where the waters flow…’’
Prince’s 2010 song was inspired by a gig at the Montreux Jazz Festival in the Swiss canton of Vaud. Montreux, Vevey and the winegrowing Lavaux area are all part of what’s known as the Montreux Riviera, where vineyards overlooking snow-capped Alps terrace down spectacularly to the blue waters of Lake Léman.
Cool music, so no surprise to find it, like some sort of audio mascot, on the website of Neowines. Their logo is ‘’Yes, We Can!’’—in English—and they’re doing what for Switzerland is a pretty avant-garde thing to be doing: canning wines.
White, Rosé and Red
The company, itself based a few miles from Vevey in Cully, cans not only the quintessential Lavaux variety, Chasselas, which is also Switzerland’s premier white variety, but a rosé wine and a red wine, also from Lavaux. Both of the latter are blends: the rosé is mostly Gamay, the red can include Gamay, Pinot Noir as well as a newish Swiss variety called Gamaret. Gamay and Pinot Noir are to Swiss red varieties what Chasselas is to white—flagship.
The wines are made by the Union Viticole de Cully and canning takes place in Cully as well
So: Neowines plays cool music, likes the English language (considered very cool in Switzerland), and plugs a new way of packaging Swiss wine, cleverly juxtaposing these things with traditional Swiss varieties, UNESCO-blessed Swiss scenery, local events like Montreux Jazz—a savvy and appealing mix of the known and the now. But besides that, what’s the point?
Why Can Wine?
There are many reasons to can wine. For one, the light-weight small cans are easy to stock, and there’s no danger of breakage, which makes them ideal for on-the-go catering, trains, planes, hotel room refrigerator bars, events, picnics, BBQs…the list is long.
The amount in each can equals one or two servings depending on the size of the glass, but glasses can also be dispensed with. Cans may be compacted for recycling, and since aluminum is 100% recyclable there are no troubled consciences along the way.
Additional advantages are that aluminum chills faster than glass, so chilled whites and rosés stay cold longer—and the wine itself can’t be damaged by exposure to light. Nor is there the problem of oxidation.
A First in Switzerland
Alain Toscan, the entrepreneur behind Neowines, interviewed by phone, said that while his company is the first to can wine in Switzerland, it is already a developing market elsewhere. ‘’You get some countries, like Australia, Chile, South Africa, that can wines of a certain quality, but a lot of what you see on the world market is really inferior in terms of wine quality, and not very good,’’ he says, adding that a key underlying concept behind his wines is that it is fine, quality wine.
Toscan says that while on-the-go convenience was a big factor in designing his product (‘’I mean just think, packing a can in your rucksack when you’re hiking, it’s not heavy; or at the beach, no danger of breaking the bottle and leaving shards all over the place’’) another consideration was the growing number of people in Switzerland who live alone.
The Swiss Federal Office of Statistics has charted the rise of one and two-person households and steep decline of households of 3 or more person households. ‘’There’s a growing trend in Switzerland to market smaller quantities for single people who don’t want to be bothered with a lot of cooking and cellaring, who just buy enough for one – and in the case of wine, our cans are also an easy way to manage consumption.’’
Neowines Created in February 2011
The company may be just a few months old, but response has already been strong, Toscan says, with Switzerland’s second largest supermarket chain Coop (some 2,000 outlets strong) having ordered the Chasselas and the rosé for its summer range at 125 of its biggest stores nationwide.
In the Swiss-French part of the country, Toscan, a wine lover whose professional background is in communication, has already developed a network of small stores, and restaurants, and he’s in the process, he says, of developing national train and airline markets.
Retail, aside from ordering on the Neowines website, customers can buy the wines at the Union Viticole shop in Cully.
Quality and Price
Quality? Having sampled all three types, this writer can attest that these Lavaux AOC wines are thoroughly quaffable. They come with descriptions of their color, nose, tasting notes, just as bottled wines would, and they amply merit that attention. Alcohol content is either 12% or 12,5%.
What’s nice too is that Neowines doesn’t suggest that one would select these wines for a gastronomic blow-out; it plays fair when it claims these are quality wines, well-adapted to modern contingencies, but without trying to trump them up beyond that. The cans are by no means a replacement for the pleasures of opening a traditional bottle of wine, but then again Neowines doesn’t claim they are.
Price? Retail, the cans are available via the company website in 24-can packs for CHF 96 ($115), which works out to CHF 4 per 200 ml can or around $4.80 in a country where a 100 ml glass of wine can easily cost 4 Swiss francs in an average bistro. Recommended retail price for people buying single cans elsewhere is CHF 4 per can.
Compared to the mileage you’d get buying a 750 ml bottle for CHF 14 or $16.75 (a lower-middle-range price for a bottle of Swiss wine) – say, seven glasses, $2.40 a glass. So not a budget option in the absolute, although there are plenty of situations where paying extra would be amply worth it because it means saving on a lot of other hassle.
Verdict
All told, the canned wines are a fair deal pricewise, rate high for convenience yet deliver that indispensable recycling factor. The Neowines marketing approach, geared to stir memories or visions of a beautiful location, classic Swissness and emblematic Swiss Chasselas, pairs well with their use of novel packaging, English, and more, to plug into a contemporary, supra-Swiss vibe.
The result is a very appealing product that should work well on the national market and niche markets beyond.
Gail Mangold-Vine - Based in Geneva, Switzerland, Gail Mangold-Vine is the author of two books. Her work as a journalist is published worldwide.
